So, we’re supposed to believe that Tevin M. Davis, the VCU theater alum/”Survivor 46” contestant, just up and FaceTimed the governor, got her on the phone, got her permission to record, and also got 37 minutes of her time – all out of the blue.
Uh, huh.
It’s perfectly OK that the Abigail Spanberger press team arranged for this, even if it hasn’t gotten the click rate that they might have assumed – at this writing, the video has been on YouTube since Monday afternoon, so, roughly 48 hours, and has 643 views.
For comparison, a video featuring an image of Donald Trump and my voice simply reading a stupid column that I wrote about the POTUS being old, fat and riddled with dementia that runs two minutes, 10 seconds, is a 2,529 views and counting since I posted it 17 hours ago.
ICYMI
Can I interest the Spanberger PR team in having me do a voiceover of a column that I could write about how great the governor is?
I’d need to have reason to write that column first, I suppose.
The “interview” with Davis started off with him noting that he wanted to call because “people are feeling frustrated,” “confused” and “feeling betrayed” by the governor’s vetoes on key measures, notably recreational cannabis, public-sector collective bargaining and legislation that would have barred ICE from making warrantless arrests in state courthouses.
ICYMI
- Spanberger doesn’t understand why labor critics see ‘betrayal’ on collective bargaining
- Spanberger tries, and fails, to explain Affordable Medicine Act veto
- Gov. Spanberger taking brave stand on behalf of data center developers
- Governor DeVeto: Abigail Spanberger is clearly just not good at the job
Which made you think, for a brief moment, OK, we’re going to get something here.
Then things went the softball route when Davis made it clear what his approach was going to be:
“Can you break it down to me like I don’t know nothing about politics so that I can clearly understand your rationale on why you veto these bills and are these issues still something you even support?”
The reason the video isn’t trending is, it took forever and a day for Spanberger, almost entirely just arguing with herself, to talk her way around the rationale for her vetoes.
On the one hand, you want to appreciate the depth; on the other, can you just get to the damn point already?
Especially when, nothing newsworthy came out of her long-winded answers.
With no pushback from her friendly “interviewer,” all we got was: I’m the governor, the governor has a right to veto legislation, I exercised that right on those items, and I feel fine.
I get why her team wanted her to do this “interview.” Tevin M. Davis is young, he has some social media clout – 19.2K subscribers on YouTube; 37K followers on Facebook; 168.2K followers on TikTok; 225K followers on Instagram.
I particularly like the shorts on Facebook, TikTok and Insta, featuring Davis “running into” Spanberger for a face-to-face on the Supreme Court decision on redistricting.
That one has 5,869 views on TikTok at this writing; it helps that its run time is 2:53.
Pro tip: maybe someone on the Spanberger PR team should suggest to Davis’ team that they chop up the long-form “interview” into digestible bites.
A for effort on this; the grade on execution is incomplete.
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Chris Graham
